Page 63 - Stat guidance template

Annex C: Online safety

The use of technology has become a significant component of many safeguarding
issues. Child sexual exploitation; radicalisation; sexual predation: technology often
provides the platform that facilitates harm. An effective approach to online safety
empowers a school or college to protect and educate the whole school or college
community in their use of technology and establishes mechanisms to identify, intervene
in and escalate any incident where appropriate.

The breadth of issues classified within online safety is considerable, but can be
categorised into three areas of risk:

• content: being exposed to illegal, inappropriate or harmful material;
• contact: being subjected to harmful online interaction with other users; and
• conduct: personal online behaviour that increases the likelihood of, or causes,
harm.

Filters and monitoring

Governing bodies and proprietors should be doing all that they reasonably can to limit
children’s exposure to the above risks from the school or college’s IT system. As part of
this process, governing bodies and proprietors should ensure their school or college has
appropriate filters and monitoring systems in place. Whilst considering their responsibility
to safeguard and promote the welfare of children, and provide them with a safe
environment in which to learn, governing bodies and proprietors should consider the age
range of their pupils, the number of pupils, how often they access the IT system and the
proportionality of costs vs risks.

The appropriateness of any filters and monitoring systems are a matter for individual
schools and colleges and will be informed in part by the risk assessment required by the
88
Prevent Duty.

The UK Safer Internet Centre has published guidance as to what “appropriate” might look
like:

• UK Safer Internet Centre: appropriate filtering and monitoring

Guidance on e-security is available from the National Education Network-NEN. Buying
advice for schools is available here: buying for schools.

Whilst filtering and monitoring are an important part of the online safety picture for

schools and colleges to consider, it is only one part. Governors and proprietors should
consider a whole school approach to online safety. This will include a clear policy on the

88 Prevent duty

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